From Pop Up to Popular Pastries: Their Labor of Love Became a Sweet Success

During the pandemic, husband-and-wife duo Mogan Anthony and Seleste Tan learned to bake kuih, which means snacks or desserts in Malay, the language of Malaysia, a pastry Anthony describes as having “a mochi-like texture made out of glutinous rice, sticky rice and rice flour,” in their basement in Greenwich, Connecticut.

The couple, who are both Malaysian natives, met in Singapore when they were working at the Four Seasons, and although Tan is a French-trained pastry chef, she never tried her hand at making kuih until COVID hit.

They started gifting batches of the traditional Southeast Asian pastry to family and friends, but always had too much left over, so decided to post the delicacies on social media to give them away free of charge. “We were making way too much and we ended up putting up a page on Instagram,” Anthony explained. “And it just got popular and people started to share it and reach out.”

In February 2021, the pair, who now have three children, ages 9, 6 and 2, decided to sell their sweet treats at a pop-up at the Coffee Project in the East Village. Due to the high demand from customers, exactly a year later, they opened a storefront a block away at 333 East 9th Street. And in October of 2022, they were invited to be part of the opening team of vendors at Urban Hawker, a Singapore-inspired food center on West 50th Street whose concept was created by the late Anthony Bourdain.

Now, their customers, many of whom are children of immigrants from Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, flock to the bakery from places as far as away Canada, Seattle and Los Angeles, for their traditional kuih, which they also ship to all 50 states. Other popular items on their menu include cakes such as calamansi passionfruit and pandan mille crepe, which are made with ingredients like palm sugar, rice flour and coconut milk, which are all sourced from Southeast Asia.

Anthony, who works full time as a managing partner and culinary director for the restaurant group Village Social Hospitality in Westchester and wakes up at 4:30 in the morning to help Tan run Lady Wong, explained the meaning behind the patisserie’s name.

“It was supposed to be ong. In Malaysia, ong means lucky. So it was supposed to be ‘Lady Ong,’ but when we put that together on paper, we felt like something was missing, so we added the ‘w,’” he said, laughing.

What brought you to New York originally?

A friend of ours was opening a restaurant here and we got invited to consult. When we moved here, we were working with that consulting group and I left and ended up working for Jean Georges for almost four years. Then I moved to my current position as culinary director/managing partner for a restaurant group, Village Social Hospitality, based in Westchester. We got married and had kids, so my wife took a step back from pastries. She used to work at Wd-50 with Alex Stupak as a pastry cook, then Village Social Hospitality group as pastry chef consultant.

What happened during the pandemic?

During the pandemic, I still remember the date, March 16, 2020, I managed about five to six restaurants as our culinary director. And I saw that day that the sales just dropped and nobody was really showing up to restaurants. So me and my owner, we said, “Nobody’s coming, so we got to make a change.” So we shut down temporarily for two to six months in some locations. Some locations reopened faster than others. That’s the time Lady Wong was born.

You started doing pop-ups to sell the pastries before you opened a storefront.

After we gave it away, we transitioned into a pop-up stage, where we were like, “Let’s just do this for fun,” from February until December 2021. We were doing them at the Coffee Project in the East Village once or twice a month. The pop-up really took off overnight because we already had a sizable amount of people who wanted these types of pastries and we always had people around the block. That’s how we started to work towards a storefront after that.

You opened a storefront in the East Village in 2022. How did you choose that location?

We did the pop-ups a block away and when we wanted to establish a storefront we chose the East Village. People are more open-minded there. Customers try anything in the East Village. After the pop-up, we had to reopen our restaurants, and, as of today, I’m still running the restaurants and this is just on the side.

People reach out to you on Instagram to tell you they can’t find these sweets anywhere else.

They always tell us things like, “I was born and raised in Vietnam. My mom or grandma used to make it. I just can’t find this pandan flavor and ubes and some of these southeast Asian flavors.” They always come and say “Can you guys ship?” We get that until today.

What’s a typical day like for you? What time do you wake up?

We usually wake up around 4:30. Those mochi-like pastries, they need six to eight hours rest. So we have to make them at night. In the morning we have to cut them into slices. And then we take them to the city. Either I drive myself or I have a driver that brings them. We make them upstate near where we live. Usually by the time we leave, it sometimes could be midnight. Usually my wife goes back and picks up the kids. We take turns. We just decided to hire more help.

How did you get into Urban Hawker?

That was crazy. The same day we opened up the Lady Wong storefront, Anthony Bourdain’s team walked right into my front door and said, “We want you to be there.” I loved Anthony Bourdain. Five years prior to that, I sent an email to his team and said, “I heard you are working on this project.” And the team responded to me and said, “The project is really just in the initial stage, but we’ll be happy to keep in touch.”

What are your best selling items?

The calamansi passionfruit cake is very popular among our customers. If people are intimidated trying the traditional pastries, they enjoy the cakes. We are also known for our pandan mille crepe and black sesame cake.

What are your future plans for the business?

A lot of people ask us to open on the West Coast, but we have not made any decisions. We have our hands full now.

To learn more, visit www.ladywong.com